


Learning and Remembering

by Fraddit



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 15:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fraddit/pseuds/Fraddit
Summary: They were sat together in front of the fire, his legs crossed beneath him.  Alice was curled on his lap, taking off his rings and putting them on her own hands, delighting in their being to too large for her and watching them fall off her fingers, putting them all back on, exactly where they came from. She brushed her hands up his arm, tugging his sleeve and pulling his arm around her in a gentle embrace.“Papa?”“Yes, Starfish?”“What does Milah mean?”





	Learning and Remembering

They were sat together in front of the fire, his legs crossed beneath him.  Alice was curled on his lap, taking off his rings and putting them on her own hands, delighting in their being to too large for her and watching them fall off her fingers, putting them all back on, exactly where they came from. She brushed her hands up his arm, tugging his sleeve and pulling his arm around her in a gentle embrace.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Starfish?”

“What does Milah mean?”

It was unexpected, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been.  Her small, perfect hands danced over the skin of his right arm.  She’d read his tattoo.  Pride bubbled up with the expected anguish.  She’d recently mastered her letters, could well and truly read.  Now, when she wanted to read her favorite book to him, she wasn’t just reciting from memory, the letters actually held meaning for her, and she was hungry for each new word she could discover.

When he tried to answer, the cold hand of grief reached up from his lungs and gripped tight round his throat, choking him breathless.  Tears bit at the back of his eyes, but he cleared his throat and pressed on.  Alice deserved to know, and perhaps even more so, Milah deserved to be known.

“Milah is a name, Starfish. She was a person.  My great love.  I loved her almost as much as I love you.”

“Like the princesses in my stories?”

He saw her in his mind’s eye, glittering in the sun on the deck of the Jolly Roger, her hair whipping in the wind as she turned to smile at him. 

“Yes, Starfish, exactly like the princesses in your stories.”

“Were you her prince?”

He could almost feel the weight of her head on his shoulder and the curve of her in his arms and slip of her hair through his fingers.  Could almost hear the contentment in her sigh.  Was he her prince?  He’d tried to be.  But the princes in Alice’s stories were always able to save their princess. 

However, Alice didn’t need to be burdened with an old man’s feelings of guilt, so he answered, “Yes. She was my princess, and I was her prince.  We loved each other very much.”

“Did you get married?”

Another question whose answer was too complicated for a child her age to fully understand.

“Yes.  We were married.”

“Then, where is she? I thought getting married means be together forever.”

Anger, raw and hot, lanced through his gut.  His arm ached under his brace.  Ashen dust, crumbling to the deck of his ship.  She whispered to him as the light dimmed in her eyes.

“Papa?”

Alice.  She’d turned toward him.  Her beautiful face looked up at him, her eyes glittering with life and concern.

His fist had clenched firm against his knee.  Easing his fingers open, he brought them up to cup Alice’s cheek, brushing her hair away from her face as he pulled in an anchoring breath.

“I’m sorry, Starfish.”  Whether his apology was for scaring her or for what he was about to say he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was both.  “She’s gone.  She… died.”

“Oh…”

She looked so sad. His little girl, his Alice, his Starfish, she had the biggest heart to feel so sad at hearing that someone she’d never met had died.  He dragged his hand soothingly up and down her back as he waited in the agonized hope that she would not ask the question that was most likely to come next, but his Alice was never one to go easy on him, and he loved her all the more for it.

“How did she die?”

Such a simple question, asked with the innocent curiosity of a child who only wants to learn about the world, learn about her papa and the woman that he loved.  But how to answer it?  The truth was so dark, so evil.  He didn’t want to scare her, make her afraid of the world she couldn’t be a part of. One day he would find a way to free her from this tower, and they were going to go on so many adventures.  The last thing he wanted was for Alice to be scared of the world outside the tower.

“She…”  What could he say?  Killed by a man?  A monster?  He didn’t want to lie to her, but she was still so young.  He thought of her storybooks.  “She died saving me from a monster.”

“She saved you?”

He could still feel the hand in his chest, squeezing.  Could hear her voice ring out from the shadows of the alley like a bell in the night. Yes.  She had saved him.  And every day before Alice came into his life he had wished that she hadn’t.

“Yes, Starfish.  She did.  She was very brave.”

Alice turned again in his lap, brought her hands back to his arm, pushing the sleeve of his shirt out of the way and running the soft pads of her fingers delicately over the lines etched in his skin.  The look on her face was serious with the weight of thoughts he wasn’t privy to.

“Papa…”

She bit her lip nervously, and he shifted his arm until her hand fell into his.  He rubbed his thumb along the tiny knuckles of her fist until she relaxed and gripped him back.

“Papa is… was… Milah my mother?  You said that my mother is gone and that Milah is gone too…”

Gods, how he wished that were the truth of things.  It would be so easy to pretend.  He saw so much of Milah in his Alice.  Her spirit, her longing for adventure, her heart and determination, the intelligence that glinted behind her eyes.  It could almost be true.  And the vision of that possibility… The horizon stretching in the distance as the four of them stood beneath fluttering sails…

A gray weight settled over his shoulders, pressing through his spine and threatening to cleave him in two. The regret of what if and if only sank down on top of him.

“I’m sorry Starfish. She’s not… she wasn’t… your mother.”

“I wish she was.”

“I wish that too, Starfish. I wish that too.”


End file.
